It never fails that I reach for a snack while reading or listening and then DG decides she's going to give a lesson on the anatomy of some ailment of some non-character just to flex her medical muscles for several pages. And stop with the disgusting details of sores and creatures people of the 1700s have growing or crawling out of them. All of these things make me run my hands over my face and down the bridge of my nose while making a low Scottish noise in the back of my throat. These women seem much more like women in this day an age than of their mid century time.

I'm also constantly annoyed, this many books later that even if Brea is a grown woman she (just like her mother) still doesn't get that even if she hates it, assuming a more demure role in public would save Roger (and Jamie) A LOT of troubles. It would be nice to actually see how Jamie and Claire handle normal boring day to day business of marriage for any amount of time that would find regular mortals dealing more with relationship issues than constant threat of the Red Coats. Not to mention, how the main character always escapes death and disease. With the frequency that the main characters 'just happen' to find themselves bumping into prominent historical figures or evil doers is dizzying. So is the strange ability that has people randomly cross paths all the time. Why hasn't her editor reined her in on this? If she stopped this tedious practice of constantly retelling every characters back story (even if it was just told a few chapters prior!) she could easily shave 500 pages from each book and 25 hours off each audiobook! I'll be honest, I keep going because I want to know how Jamie is, but the near constant calamity that befalls him and Claire is laughable at times. I just wish DG had enough faith in the reader memory to not rehash everything that's happened throughout the books every single time she changes from one character to the next.

Once again Davina does a glorious job narrativing, but I think even she is feeling long winded at this point.

Written in my own heart's blood